"We don't want to have a smoking gun," a ranking administration official said recently. He added, "I don't know whether the point is to embarrass Blix or embarrass Saddam Hussein."

By Walter Pincus (Washington Post)
Sunday, March 16, 2003; Page A17

[Senator Carl] Levin wrote Tenet back March 7 saying the CIA director gave a "misleading assertion" and repeated a request that Tenet provide a percentage figure, not the number, of the "top suspect sites" listed in the December report that had been turned over to U.N. inspectors. "I can't believe we are holding back, and it would be shocking if it is being done, because it might lead the inspectors to something," Levin said.

A CIA spokesman refused to discuss the matter. But some officials charge the administration is not interested in helping the inspectors discover weapons because a discovery could bolster supporters in the U.N. Security Council of continued inspections and undermine the administration's case for war."We don't want to have a smoking gun," a ranking administration official said recently. He added, "I don't know whether the point is to embarrass Blix or embarrass Saddam Hussein."

Anther official familiar with the intelligence said, "Not all the top sites have been passed to the inspectors."

A senior intelligence analyst said one explanation for the difficulties inspectors have had in locating weapons caches "is because there may not be much of a stockpile."

Administration officials, in making the case against Iraq, repeatedly have failed to mention the considerable amount of documented weapons destruction that took place in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, when the previous U.N. Special Commission on Iraq had inspection teams in the field.